How to Organize Your Child's Artwork

Back to school season is upon us. You know what that means? An influx of paperwork! And by paperwork, I mean artwork. Especially if you have little ones, they will bring home piles of drawings, coloring pages, and artwork from school or daycare.

Soon enough, your house is filled with pages and pages of artwork because you feel guilty about throwing them away!

You say to yourself, “But they worked so hard on it” or “They brought it home to show me. They wouldn’t want me to just throw it away”. 

Let me tell you this: You are not a bad parent if you do not keep every single drawing or scribble that they made! 

Having trouble talking through each piece of “artwork?” Here are some things to consider when deciding which pieces of artwork to keep:

1. Listen to Their Story

“Tell me about your picture” you say to your child. Then, listen to the story behind it. If they have an in depth story about it, this may be one you want to keep. If they don’t seem to really care, then you know it isn’t that important. 

2. The Unique Factor

Is there anything unique to your child in this piece of artwork? For instance, if there is a handprint, footprint, picture of your child, etc. in the piece, then you may want to consider keeping it. 

3. Is this A Duplicate?

Do you already have other examples of this type of artwork? If so, then you don’t need another one. 

4. Time & Effort

How much time and effort did they put into it? If it is just some scribbles on a page, then you may not want it. But if you can see they spent a lot of time and effort, it may be a keeper. 

5. Have Them Decide

You can try to have your kids pick. If you want to try and keep your kids involved, a great way is to ask them the question of which one to keep. A word of caution, never ask an open ended question. Give them choices to pick from. For example, “Which one of these five pictures would you like to keep?”

How to Store & Save Artwork

So you have decided on what you are keeping, but how do you store it so it still doesn’t take over your whole house? Set yourself up with a Memory Box for each child. Here are the materials you will need: file box, hanging file folders, tabs labeled with the following categories: preschool, kindergarten, 1st Grade - 12th Grade (1 tab for each grade), report cards, school pictures, achievements, birthday cards, and keepsakes, and a label for the front of the file box with your child’s name. You can put the artwork and important papers for each child in the corresponding folder according to grade and category!

These folders can be a great tool to use as a visual on how much you can actually keep for each year! Once that folder fills up, that’s it!

If you are looking to create this memory box but don’t know where to start, feel free to reach out to me. I can make all of the labels for you, and if you are local, I can put the whole thing together for you!